How hard are doors to install?

[jennypenny]

We need some interior doors. Most will replace 60yo brown hollow-core doors. We are also adding a double door off our bedroom into a newly-designed living area. Luckily, I thought to make the opening to that room a standard size when we originally built the room so I could add doors later on. Anyway ... I got some estimates and they're crazy expensive. How hard is it to install doors?

I'd love to just stick pre-fab cork-filled doors up on most of the openings. I've looked at ways to add moulding to the old doors and paint them white to look like new paneled doors. I might try one to see how it looks. I'd like the new double doors to look a little nicer so I'm thinking of putting in french doors with frosted glass. My only hesitation is sound since it's our bedroom.

I've had people tell me that it's a difficult job and I should hire someone. Is it really that hard or could we do it? It would mostly be me and my boys putting them up (one is handy, the other not so much). Is it worth it to have the new doors to our bedroom installed but then do the rest ourselves? Sorry for the questions but I'm eager to get the new doors up so I can finish the room.

[jacob]

I've put up casing molding on two of our windows which strangely had none when we bought the house.

I bought casing from the building center (it's about as cheap as SPH), but I used all hand tools to install it. Doing the 45 degree cuts is surprisingly hard with hand tools but should be easy with a compound miter saw. Any error will be really obvious (because the errors add), so this will be easier if you do a paint-ready job (you can fill the gaps with grout) than if you plan to do a stain-ready (wood grain showing). Of course, if you make a mistake you can always start over

It's slightly trickier than base molding because you're working in three dimensions instead of two.

One thing I've learned is that nothing in a house is square, so don't cut things out presuming it'll fit right in. You might find the frame to be slightly crocked which would require adjusting cuts and depths. I definitely used my block plane a to get the stuff to fit. Each window took about 3 hours for me. The longest time was spent hand planing a sill that would fit the angle of the plaster underneath. W/o that it would have taken about an hour (not counting the time I spent thinking about how to do it which was much longer since I've never done it before). The second window was much faster to do since I already knew what mistakes to look out for. Apparently the cost for a professional is $200/window, but that might be Chicago prices. I dunno if the other molding was put up by the previous homeowner, a handyman, or a carpenter, but IMHO, the work I did looked better than most of the rest windows in the house.

I don't know about doors.

[jennypenny]

This is the DIY way to upgrade cheap doors without spending much money. Then I would only have to worry about hanging the new double doors.

https://www.remodelaholic.com/5-panel-d ... re-door/2/

[rube]

I have done some of this work, it takes some time if you have never done before.
But what do you have to lose, apart from some time? Even if you have to buy some things twice you'll come out cheaper and learned a new skill.

[blackbird]

We recently replaced an exterior door. Our house is right at 50 years old, and I've discovered a lot of incongruities where I expected something to be a standard size only to realize too late that either the builder or original owner was 'winging it' often. The door had needed replacing for a while but when I measured it I thought I must be doing something wrong. It did not fit any standard size I could find and didn't fit other doors in the house. I decided to get some quotes and jennypenny is correct, they were OUTRAGEOUS. One guy dropped a quote of $2700 on the table and then talked about how the week before he installed $6000 door on a newer home. My wife said I looked as if I were having a stroke. Since we had lined up three quotes I let the other two come in, second quote was $1100, and the guy spent the whole time talking about the company who provided the first quote being no bueno. Third guy was from Home Depot, his price was $500. That was still really high for me, but he ended up having to rebuild the frame around it and cut out the bottom bit and rebuild up. The old door was apparently *very* custom, so in the end I was glad I did it. Though the $500 still hurt.

[jennypenny]

I guess I have nothing to lose by trying it myself first. If I fumble it, I can always hire someone. It won't cost that much to try (although I always have to factor in costs like emergency room deductibles, tool replacement, etc. ).

[FBeyer]

Have you 'youtubed' for How to Install Double Doors?
Just.. before I start typing out a page's worth of instructions?

[Campitor]

In my experience switching out doors in old homes can be a challenge if you want a door to hang correctly in it's frame. Here are the challenges I've encountered:

1. Door jamb is out of square. Fix by reframing jamb square.
2. Door jamb is out of plane. Tack a string diagonally from the top of the jamb to the diagonal jamb leg on each side - the string should touch each other in the middle - if they don't that means you will need to push/pull one of the jamb leg into the correct plane.
3. Door being replaced isn't a conventional size. You will need to trim down a new door to size or build your own door - not hard if you have the tools and know how. It can be done with a saw, router, and some clamps if you have mid-level to advance level woodworking skills and patience.

Moving the door jamb around is probably the hardest thing to do because the trim in your house may crack or break as you lift off or push the trim around the door. Be very careful removing old trim. Use a blade to separate the trim from the paint, and use a cat's paw to gingerly pry off the trim. The trim profile in old homes, in my experience, doesn't exist anymore and you can only get matching trim by having someone make a custom cutter to fabricate them or you own a bunch of molding planes so you can hand make them yourself.

[jacob]

To add to @Campitor: I discovered that the trim in my home matched the Home Depot/Menards standard-cheap bulk option exactly. (This initially surprised me ... then later, it didn't surprise me at all. Much home construction appears to be fancy and difficult, but it's really pretty standard stuff... unless it's old .. or expensive .. or old and expensive, which is the worst combo.)

If your trim is not standard then you have to ask ffj or a mill to file the desired profile bit for their shaper in order to create custom profiles ... and then we're talking much effort => $$$. To check if you're "lucky"(?) enough to have standard stuff, go to home depot and look at what they offer. Chances are your house will have something like that. For example. all my doors and windows are all one part base molding and one part case molding, exactly like this:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Woodgrain-M ... /202089296
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Woodgrain-M ... /203209372

Wait for a sale and you can get it for half off in which case $10 will get you a couple of window casings' worth. Add a short couple of afternoons and you're done. Alternatively, find and pay a pro $600 to bang something up ... and you're also done.

[jennypenny]

@fb—Yes but some things are easier than they look and some are harder. I want to DIY the easy ones and pay for the hard ones (since I don’t have time to DIY the whole job).